


hello

by yerm



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: (also he's an actor), Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Theatre, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Philosophy, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Translation, and donghyuck is the light of author’s life, mark is a poet, some dead poets society vibes, they have a literature club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-25 19:40:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20377030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yerm/pseuds/yerm
Summary: either a command, or a greeting//au, where mark is a poet who lost all of his words and donghyuck, a (not) random passerby, who picked them up.





	1. readings

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [здравствуй](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18544804) by [monstrum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monstrum/pseuds/monstrum). 

> when asked who this work is dedicated to, author said "i'm a selfish bitch. i dedicate it to myself" and i think that's beautiful
> 
> original work on [ficbook](https://ficbook.net/readfic/7632329)
> 
> author's [twt](https://twitter.com/sailorstay)

They gather, like they always do, on Thursdays in a storeroom of the bookshop, where Yoonoh has been working for two years and a half; the shop closes at eight in the evening and, if someone from the writer's group doesn't show up at half-past nine, doesn't let anyone in with its threateningly large metal lock that hangs on the door, right until ten in the morning. The exception works only for the trinity that rents a corridor style apartment on the second floor, that is for Yoonoh himself, a sponsor and a failed actor, Dongyoung, who writes two novels in five hundred pages a year, and Taeyong, a storyteller and a ballad, scarf and beret lover. 

They start from Seulgi today: these past months she's been working on a small, but a novella nonetheless. About a crazy man, an artist in a yellow costume covered in acrylic paint, who's running around the town. The artist's face is frightening, his gaze is demonic; random passers-by jump away from him in different directions, but he still runs, runs, runs, smells of his closet and fresh white bread and sings something under his breath when in the morning he gets to a sprawling oak tree in the park. The artist pulls his hair out, sways from side to side, flinches when the policeman touches his shoulder, he draws his unhealthily shining eyes to the stranger and whispers.

Whispers that he knows what picture he wants to paint. The policeman nods and nods, takes the artist's elbow and guides, guides and guides him away under the crowd's buzzing, despising the creator. The policeman leads him away to some light and far country, he gives him the right to live and write his new paintings there, where there are no unpretentious brutes. Where there are always fresh fruits and sweet water. And, maybe, the stranger wasn't a policeman? And, maybe, the artist wasn't crazy?

Seulgi asks the question, looking at the wall, where Sooyoung's leaning on it, tearful, touched by her story, applauding; the question hangs in the air right after silence and someone's heavy breathing. 

"Thank you," Yoonoh finally finds something to say as he jumps from his seat to announce the next reader, staring into the semicircle of familiar faces. A smokey gray cat, who Mark'd brought one day, rubs on Yoonoh's feet, and Dongyoung snaps. 

"I'd gladly listen to..." sly bitch, he's stalling, puffing on his disgustingly strong, bitter and viscous cigarette without any flavorings; a typical cheap tobacco (or is it really tobacco?) from a stall, such a thing grandpas love so much, occupying all yard benches with small tables from spring to fall for a round of lotto or dominoes. "...Mark. Yes, I'd gladly listen to Mark."

And Mark would gladly like the ground to swallow him whole, because ten pairs of eyes glue to him immediately, flashing predatorily in the dim light of the storeroom lamp. Everything here is, frankly speaking, dim. After all, the whole world doesn't overflow with brightness, too. 

"I have nothing," he takes a deep breath and holds tiny drops of tears in the corners of his eyes, they're as tiny as the passenger's chance to survive on Titanic. 

"What nothing?" Dongyoung turns around in search of a trashcan. He finds it next to Kun, sticks his tongue out at his friend and rips a page out of his notebook, then twists in it what has left of his cigarette, as long as he doesn't have to get up and walk in Chinese's direction who's clenching a folder with stories. 

"You're sick," Yoonoh whispers and shakes his head, returning to his seat and sitting down heavily, as if he's just turned one hundred twenty-seven.

"What's wrong?" Dongyoung doesn't understand, too busy with his cigarette.

"Isn't that a draft of your novel, what if you took out something important?"

"Oh please," Dongyoung clicks his tongue and rolls his eyes, "everybody writes novels now. One more, one less, one's mine, one's yours," he flicks Yoonoh's nose and turns to Mark again. "What nothing you have?"

"Nothing to read," the iceberg gets closer and closer, the collision more and more inevitable. 

"And to eat? What do you have to eat then?" 

"I-I have food to eat, but how does it matter?" Mark scratches his brow in confusion and wrinkles his crooked nose, he'd participated in a street fight a couple of years ago, right there he'd gotten his nose broken. 

"Well, I could've made you eat your previous compilation, but since you're not starving, then fine," Dongyoung scrunches his fingers, his neck, and Mark's nerves. "Because your works could be eaten out of starvation only, for the pleasure - probably not." 

Mark noisily breathes through his nose, he feels like an offended child. But he is a child, he's the youngest one here anyway, and he is for sure offended right now. As if he likes very much that the words won't come out for more than a year no matter how much he's tried; as if he likes very much that even if something comes out, it's worthless and empty; as if he likes very much that he can't meet anyone's expectations, not even his own. 

"I will get better, I promise."

"Don't promise it to us," Yoonoh tries to smile encouragingly, "promise it to your internal Poet." 

Mark nods, and thinks to himself, _w__hy on earth would dead men need someone's promises?_

"Alrighty, let's welcome the Fairytale," meanwhile, Yoonoh returns to the center of the room and a small light bulb unshapely casts a shadow on his pretty face. He's all dimples - the worries for his younger friend have receded in the background, - and Yoonoh points at the darkest corner of the room, bows, and applauds. _ The Fairytale _responds to the invitation gladly.

Taeyong drags a chair, metal legs squeaking on the smooth floor and making such a lousy creak that Dongyoung has to cough into his fist, without words trying to explain to his friend that he's doing something wrong. Taeyong only stares in response malevolently; he takes off his shoes and climbs on his chair with socked feet, his musical fingers clinging to the loose strings of his burgundy scarf. He looks around the auditorium - yawning in fist, whispering about something, tired of the late time of the day and past trial - and takes a deep breath as if he suddenly sensed a flower smell on this dull winter evening. 

Taeyong smiles, he starts his ode.

About exploits, ridiculous deaths, pretense, poison, the sky, so blue over a silver spire of a castle, as crimson as the main character's last sunset. About friendship, devotion, revenge, accidents, so terrible and unchanging on this knightly and fairy way. About courage, purity, the cruelest of all kinds of hatred that kills any heroism. 

Mark has always liked Taeyong's works; he liked his words, the sleepless nights beside an open window and a dozen of ridiculous scarves, tortured by creative torment. And he liked the play, too. Fake hoarse for old predictors. Melodious voice for a brave prince. Hysterical cry for a random peasant child. Taeyong lived in his stories: for half an hour, a year, a second, a week, a writing night; he lived on the rights of a passerby, a dungeon ghost, a curse, a bush of wild roses; he lived as fully and brightly as he never lived in the real world.

He takes a pause: admiring not himself, but his story, his Fairytale, he raises his hand in a farewell gesture, tightening the scarf around his neck like he's hanging himself. The main character dies, and Taeyong's eyes roll back, he falls down, miraculously doesn't break all his bones. And as if he just didn’t fall - first he sits down on his chair, then - he leans back, exhausted, closes his eyes (his eyelids tremble) and whispers, "The end."

Nobody bursts into applause. 

\\\

Taeil, the youngest director of their amateur theatre, takes a deep breath and smiles happily, spreads his arms, asking for a hug, and the actors, smiling just as giddily, practically fly to him.

"Good job! You did such a good job!"

They rehearsal not for so long, plus or minus one day; one month, they haven't made any decorations and slogans for the performance yet, even not all of the extras have been found, let alone makeup, costumes, and fully memorized text. But a theatre doesn't begin in decorations, slogans, extras, and much less in makeup, costumes, and texts. A theatre begins in an actor, continues in the audience and ends in some magical, almost Christmas tale that remains in your soul like a sweet aftertaste on your lips and soft velvet on your skin. 

"We have time!" Taeil says, guiding actors to the exit. "We have all the time in the world! Renjun, come here."

Renjun has a weird habit of sitting at the back rows and whispering about something to the barmaid who doesn't understand a single thing about theatre, or the coat-check girl who has a kind voice; they both accidentally wandered into the temple of dramatic art. Renjun just sees better from the back rows: is everything on the stage in motion, if so, in which motion exactly, he sees all the light, all the color and the whole story he sees, too. Large things are seen at distance; and their stage is huge, gigantic, not by time or number of the actors. Renjun believes that its size lies in the amount of sincerity. 

"Could you finish and bring all the sketches by the twentieth? We're going at a good pace, maybe we will finish even earlier than planned."

"They're already done. I can bring them on Monday."

"Really?" It's Jaemin cutting in again; a primary actor, he always flirts with everyone and surely, as Renjun thinks, doesn't love anyone but himself. "So that one conversation we had wasn't a joke?" 

For some strange reason, before the rehearsal, they happened to be near each other, although usually, Renjun tries not to interact with Jaemin. And Jaemin immediately began to ply him with questions, and Renjun immediately began to dodge them, reflecting on a much more important problem: does the actor have any sense of humor?

"Of course," he nods, dramatically serious. "Of course, it wasn't a joke."

"I will die waiting till Monday!" Jaemin almost whines and makes puppy eyes at him. "Is there a way to see them earlier? Will you send me a photo?"

"No!" Renjun refuses right away. "Then you will send it to someone else, I know y'all actors. Want to go to my house, you'll see everything on your own? I don’t have the strength to meet up with you tomorrow, and I don't wanna ruin my weekends with your presence."

Actually, he plans on spending the weekend with his housemate Mark, a bottle of cider and a very specific box of pizza. They'd watch some movie about superheroes together, discuss its meaninglessness and jump into a debate about new ideas. Renjun with his art, Mark with his poems. Then, they'd go to their rooms at four in the morning, and then meet in the living room again because apparently, they both were impatient to do the chores.

Because it's impossible living like that.

The point is, Renjun might be a kleptomaniac. He brings home all at once: a mug that he saw on the window of a small shop that he walks by from school every night; shiny red-nosed Rudolf socks; a board game, the existence of which is completely ignored in the future; a carnival mask, which he found behind the theatre scene; all the brochures that people give out dressed in costumes of bears, anime heroes and strawberry rolls. So many things Renjun just _drags_ after himself that it gets scary, is it possible to find at least something in this eerie bunch of buttons, badges, t-shirts, headphones, and talismans on a string?

"I'll just show you the sketch and nothing else," he reminds probably himself. 

Jaemin smiles. As for him, this phrase and a declaration of eternal love are just the same. "Fine." 

"No, not fine! Don't show me that face," Renjun scoffs and gets startled as he sees that the last bus is already on the stop. He takes Jaemin's hand and _drags_ after himself. "Just in time," he exhales happily as he flops down on a seat of torn brick-colored leather. 

Jaemin nods: Renjun might've gotten in time but he, Jaemin, isn't in a hurry.

"So, my character will wear a broad-brim?" He urges on, remembering the talk that happened before their rehearsal. 

They have to drive on such a road (unexpectedly littered with snow, a huge number of traffic lights on the way, to the other end of the city) for about an hour, Renjun feels like dozing off right there - at a sharp turn, he throws his heavy head on Jaemin’s shoulder and blissfully closes his eyes, "The prettiest broad-brim in the world." 

\\\

"Mark!" Renjun jumps out the kitchen corner and scares his housemate so much that the other drops his backpack right in the hallway, clutches at his chest and leans his shoulder against the wall. "Read us something of yours." 

"Us? Did you find yourself a couple of imaginary friends? Or are we using honorifics now, Your Highness?"

Renjun frowns, brows knitted together (hint: an extreme degree of playful anger) and crosses his arms over his chest like a mom, who was waiting for her son to come by twelve in the morning, but he - what a brute! - came at twelve-one. Mark leniently smiles at him, slips off his shoes and picks up his backpack; as empty as its owner; but stops in his tracks when he sees a stranger sitting in the kitchen. 

A stranger with a familiar face.  
Mark scoffs.  
That's very interesting - to lose his mind simultaneously with Renjun and see someone third in their already small apartment.

"Jaemin," Renjun introduces the guest.

"Mark," Renjun introduces the host.

"Ah, Jaemin?!" Mark's eyes widen and become round, and he's all shaking with laughter for some reason. "In that case, yeah, of cooourse we can't without poems." 

Renjun hits Mark's shoulder, sits at the table in the kitchen and returns to what he was doing before the key turning in the door's lock interrupted him - that is, cleaning tangerines. Jaemin observes everything like fans watching tennis play, barely managing to look from one boy to the other.

"Well? Why are you staring?" Renjun looks up at Jaemin, raises his voice and something in himself (something that usually sits at his heels, but right now it's beating, beating and beating especially frequently and loud that it gets stuck in his throat, stopping him from talking). 

"I'm not staring," and he simply smiles.

"You're staring," Mark eats three slices at once. "Besides, you ain't slick."

"Are all of his poems like that?" Jaemin asks Renjun, nodding at Mark. "If so, I feel his fans, seems like they don't have a brain." 

"How odd," Renjun hums. "How odd that you're not a fan."

"Why's that?"

"I haven't seen any indication of you having a brain as well." 

While Renjun and Jaemin bicker about something, sort their (not-relationship-yet) things out, Mark fills the whistling kettle with water, sits on the strong wooden windowsill and looks through the sweaty glass at the yard, covered in a thin layer of snow, not a blanket, but a simple sheet. Two lonely lampposts looking at each other from opposite sides. Low apartment buildings, shabby and habitually ugly. A black cat with a white ear, his paw pushes a plastic jar. Mark thinks the entire world screams at him - in the right ear, in the left ear, "Write, you fool, write! Look how much there is that you could write about!"

And Mark's definitely a fool because he's able to write a whole nothing. 

And suddenly it's so unsettling from such a thought, there are tears in the corners of his eyes, and Mark takes a deep breath after a deep breath, sometimes forgetting to exhale.

He jumps off the windowsill somehow sluggishly, legs not bending; like a broken hinge doll he collapses on the floor, covers his face with his hands; Seulgi's story comes to his mind, and Mark gets so, so scared that even a crazy artist could find himself, but he, a seemingly decent poet, continues searching. 

Somewhere far away, as if from another universe, from a different probability, Jaemin asks, "Read us something. I don't need new, I haven't even heard the old poems." 

Then, the words pour out of Mark on their own accord. He reads the ugliest, quietest, most pleading poems, paces through the kitchen and almost burns himself on the boiling kettle, he scares his only listeners and himself no less. While he reads, reads and reads, his coffee cools down, his soul's got cold a long time ago. 

_There's nothing for the coffee to warm,_  
_there's no thing to warm the soul_


	2. orange bible

They spend the New Year together: no, not Mark, Renjun, and Jaemin (although the latter ones spend it together, of course), but Mark, a bottle of champagne and an empty notebook gifted by Dongyoung after a knock on the door and snowflakes poured right out of his beanie. 

"And what am I gonna do with it?" Mark sighs, twisting the notebook in his hands, doomed. 

"Return me back when it completely bubbles over with words," Dongyoung smiles. "Happy New Year!" 

"You're such an asshole," Mark narrows his eyes.

"At least I'm a talented asshole, well, goodbye!" Mark shuts his door after it, slides down on the floor, and...

...and so every day he looks at the first page and has no clue as to what to put in there, because the first page of a notebook is not a skin, after all, and poems are not a tattoo. Poetry can't stand damaged tattoos. 

And Renjun can't help here, his sketches can't give a hint; he's too far gone from his roommate and his sociopathic habits anyway - he already provides the actors with new costumes for the second play, and even gets some money (and also probably somewhere between the breaks some kisses from the lead actor, which is Jaemin himself). He's nothing but glowing ideas coming to his light head; nothing but burning fingers, rubbed by charcoal and paper; nothing but flaming with all the cups of tea he has drunk within these twenty-four hours.

"Come to the play tomorrow."

Mark tears his gaze away from the bookshelf, on which various trinkets stand, starting from some figurines to boxes of CDs (even though there are no CDs). "What is it tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow is..." Renjun stretches, his hoodie lifts up, showing a dirty-green shirt under. "It's spring tomorrow," and he sighs dreamily as if something would change from the fact that the season changes too. 

Mark, for example, doesn't believe it; he doesn't believe anything anymore.  
He doesn't believe so much that someone should build a temple in honor of him for it.

\\\

On the first day of spring, Mark doesn't go to the play. Instead, he throws the cursed notebook in his backpack, grabs a bunch of some terribly harmful cookies and heads to the bookstore. According to the _official version,_ he's going there to drink some coffee with Yoonoh while the other's on a break, and to discuss with Taeyong his new ballad. According to the _unofficial one _ \- he's about to hurt something that Dongyoung's slightly less proud of than his texts. That is, his vampire-like pale face. 

"Everything's logical. My blood he drinks just as vampires do," Mark muses, walking on dirt - that's what happened to snow at night. 

But, how it always happens when you're planning something, nothing works out. Nothing works out, but something walks in the bookstore - something that's called love. 

An unfamiliar boy is standing in front of the bookshelf with modern literature and smiles at the text, flips through the pages and stops occasionally; such a thing only those readers do, who can find themselves in the books. Just this one fact makes Mark freeze in the shop's door, the next one - to sit down right on the floor under Yoonoh's confused gaze, who meanwhile greets and serves a group of teenagers that look like hipsters.

An unfamiliar boy is reading a book named Orange Bible by one Manneskin; actually, Mark has meetings with him every day. And terribly regrets it every time. Because that one Manneskin is him. The face of the moon itself, doubtful poetry and an orange cover that for some reason has silver letters on it and not the gold ones. Every time it annoys Sooyoung so much, she's for the record a graphic designer, and her books might not be best written, but at least they are designed in such a way that you want to put them on your shelf. And pray to them instead of icons. 

Trying to analyze this scene later, Mark would rate its cinematic level to something near romcoms from the beginning of 2000s; here we have a cafe's light, bumbling glares that illuminate rare costumers, and heart- (and perhaps brain, too) -tearing pop-punk. And Mark even feels something at his fingertips as if they were numb and barely bending, and now they're finally able to properly function. 

There's no doubt - love really comes like _that. _

_ That._ On a first day of spring, with a compilation of poems in slender tan arms, without taking off its shoes and even wiping off its feet at the entrance to his heart; it thriftily brushes off the creative stupor, kisses on the top of his head, holds out the papers and a pen for him and whispers with its March cold lips as it touches his ear, _"Write."_ Mark would be glad to, but it's uncomfortable to do so aweigh. The whisper already gets warmer, might be an April one, _"Come closer." _

"What did you want?" Yoonoh asks, putting a check in the bag with books and wishing costumers a nice day.

"Nothing now," Mark shakes his head no and beelines to the stranger, and when he's near him, he suddenly doesn't know what to say. Throws at his feet (and his whole world, and his whole soul, and even his) idiotic question, "Is it a good book?" 

"Books can't be good or bad," the stranger doesn't lift his head, continuing to flip page after page. "But books can be favorite and not favorite."

"And this one?" Mark urges on and catches the stranger's eye for that, in which (contrary to all expectations) there is no bewilderment or annoyance; not even a question like "Who are you and why are you bothering me?"; there's a slight curiosity in that look and a heavy smirk as if the corners of his lips are dragged down by weighty bags. Mark is sure these bags consist of no gold bars, but the Sun itself, because light is the biggest treasure. 

"My favorite," the boy answers after a short pause and closes the book, puts it back on the shelf and takes a step back as if it'll help him survive from the text that's now repeating in his head by memory.

"Then why do you read it here, in the bookstore, and not at home, sitting in some easy chair?" Mark pushes further.

"It's noisy and cold there at home, the only easy chair is a prewar wooden stool, my great-grandad made it when he was my age, and these poems. These poems need love, how can I not give it?" 

Mark freezes and the stranger smiles, mysteriously and sadly, and leaves, slamming the bookstore's door. A whisper, a May one, heats him up, _"Follow him."_ The whole room stops together with Mark, and the time stops too; suddenly the world _comes to life,_ and Mark doesn't understand anymore how he picks his collection up from the shelf and how brings it to the cash register, understands only that Yoonoh raises his brows at him and asks, "If you wanna make such a gift, be ready for the fact that soon it will be made of you. Real organic."

"Oh, shut up, please." 

Mark doesn't know where to go, his fast legs, Eastern Wind and some unknown (must be seventh) feeling lead him. When he sees someone's back from afar, the stranger's familiar back, he starts running and as a result - catches up to him, grabs his shoulder, turns to himself and tries to regain his breath as he bends down, hands leaning on his knees. _Mark, _tells himself, _just don't fuck it up. _

"You're walking fast," _ah, no, you can't live without fucking up. _

"I move with shadows," the boy declares without a smile. 

"Thought so," Mark lifts up the collection of poems. His poems. "It's for you."

"Why?"

"Don't you like it?"

"Who said so?"

"You said it." 

"That's not true," the stranger grabs the book from Mark's hands and pulls it to his chest. "I said that I love it."

\\\

The boy's name is Donghyuck _ (but you, Mark Lee, can call me your date) _ and just so you know, he's an actor. He likes caramel latte plus two sugar bags, can tell any nursery rhyme with curses by heart and offers to make a wish on a passing car after an hour of conversation. Such people like him Mark probably has known a dozen in his life, but for some reason, this dozen has always been far and far away. But Donghyuck - he's here, close, - if Mark reached out his hand, their fingers would interweave; but Donghyuck - he's here, close, - got right into his heart.

They buy a loaf of white bread in the nearest store, Mark didn't even know that they still sell such kind of bread. A typical white bread that his grandma used to buy, picking up little Mark from school. He was yet to become a poet back then, wasn't even thinking that he's capable of becoming one; the grass was greener back then, the air was cleaner, and the sky was higher; back then it seemed that his life wouldn't fly fast under any circumstance, but here twenty-year-old Mark is, not even registering how these twenty years have passed. So, that means, he won't notice these next twenty years too, what to do with his death? Will he notice it?

"You're kinda too pensive," Donghyuck breaks off a big piece of bread and continues to break that piece into smaller ones, then drops it on the tile and invites all crows and pigeons. "It's contraindicated being so pensive."

"Why's that?" Mark takes the bag with bread from Donghyuck, and their fingers bump together. 

Their eyes collide.

And then, Donghyuck is grabbing Mark's face, looking right in the eye, kissing him on the lips.  
And then, Mark is already smiling and laughing. "What now?"

"Nothing," Donghyuck looks so cheekily, his pinky hooking around Mark's. "Happiness matches you very well."

Mark reads in this phrase quite something else at all, because right there, in the phrase, plain as day: _I match you very well._ Mark can't bring himself to argue: Donghyuck is, in fact, happiness in its true form. Like nothing's happened, Donghyuck goes back to feeding the birds. He doesn't blush, doesn't try to make some explanation for kissing a practically total stranger, and doesn't even look away. The wind blows behind their backs and spreads the last crumbs of bread a little further, and Mark's head spins so rapturously-flowery, just like after a really good and gentle sleep. 

"Listen," Donghyuck voices when there's no bread left. "What if I kissed you again..."

"Yeah?" Mark nods his head, pretty calm, despite the mimosa buds blooming in his heart. 

"...would you smile again?" 

This time it's Mark who kisses first, and they're both smiling now.  
Like children when munching on gummy bears. H-a-p-p-i-l-y.

\\\

When Mark returns home that evening, he (without taking off his jacket) sits at his desk and gets Dongyoung's gift out of his backpack. Writes uncertain, as if he forgot how to. One word, two words - it's a sentence, two sentences - a stanza, two stanzas - a poem, two poems - a page. 

And there goes a line after a line, one rhyme catches up to another, there are only punctuation marks and symbols of letters in front of his eyes, they fold into syllables that carve the text up. Mark's burning. He's burning for the first time of so many months. 

He hears his own words clearly, as if he tuned the wave of his favorite radio station in his head, and turns the sound on to maximum, and writes for days on end, earning on his fingers, rough from gone frost. 

Mark locks himself in his room and doesn't accept Renjun's tea, only writes, writes and writes. Sometimes he rereads his own words and then, he laughs, cries, smiles, falls down on his pillows, looks at the ceiling or out the window. An image of Donghyuck looms and looms before his eyes, so warm and bright, the closest in the whole wide world. Sometimes Donghyuck texts him, only then Mark leaves his poems; Donghyuck is the only one who Mark could get distracted by, who he could even talk to on the phone a couple of hours or take a walk in the evening; for normal people - before going to bed. Mark goes out but doesn't sleep. 

He comes home, and with the new energy...

...he writes, writes, writes. 

Because of Donghyuck Mark simply _breathes_, water gets tastier, sweeter than before, he wants to write so bad that the texts happen to be everywhere around their apartment. Renjun trips over them, moving all his stuff, Jaemin who visits too often trips over them, Mark himself trips over, too. 

At some point, he wants to get every discreet, dull and gray thing out of the apartment. Mark runs into their kitchen, where Renjun and Jaemin drink tea with berry cupcakes, and asks, eyes scary, "Injunnie, will you draw something with yellow paint? You must draw it and get rid of that dark brown one. Why in hell would you keep it? When you finish it, we'll hang the painting over the bookshelf. Beauty at its finest!"

Renjun sheepishly blinks and looks at his roommate, understanding little to nothing. The old record player chirps in the background, he's got it at the beginning of last winter. Out the window, spring birds sing phony and silly. Overhead, the neighbors run from one room to another, their _tap tap tap_ making the paint fall off the ceiling. Right here Jaemin cuts in, incidentally pouring his rotten tea in the sink, "What? What do you mean why in hell? Living in a yellow world's gonna leave you blind!"

"Or suffocated," Renjun shrugs. "Yellow is very..." 

Mark only waves him off and says that no one listens to him in this economy.

"...a very odorous color." 

The other time Mark calls Taeyong dead in the night, luckily catches the moment when the other isn't sleeping as well, he as well sits at his desk under dim lights, and as well ruins his (pretty and musical) fingers with calluses. 

"Yeah? What? Hurry up, I have a princess cutting her own throat here."

"Sounds interesting," Mark mumbles, unsure. "I wanted to ask you..." 

"Ask quickly!" 

"I can't!"

"Why's that all of a sudden?" 

"Because the princess stopped in the middle of the process. Let's get her dying as brave people do and then you'll call me back." 

"No," Mark hears how on the other side Taeyong throws his favorite ballpoint pen on the desk; it writes in dark purple and its cap erases the ink; this pen is Taeyong's sister's gift and normally he wouldn't throw his sister's gifts. 

"But why not?" Mark wants to throw something too but he can't, he's too scared of shaking off his mess' creative harmony. 

"Because she isn't brave," Taeyong purses his lips, it could be seen even through the cellular network. "Got it? She's a coward. C-o-w-a-r-d." 

"But you said that only brave people dare to commit suicide." 

"Who's talking about suicide now? Mark, you're saying some nonsense!" 

"You're saying nonsense!" 

"Maybe," Taeyong's voice gets louder and more ringing. "Maybe, maybe you're right. And I actually say nonsense. At least I believe in it, at least I trust it, and you? Do you trust your nonsense?" 

Mark thinks that he now trusts only Donghyuck and believes in him as well and, alas, you can't call Donghyuck nonsense. What's nonsense after all? Something irrelevant, delirious and not lasting long. Donghyuck is more relevant than anything else, brighter than anything else. And Donghyuck...

Mark hangs up, takes a deep breath in.

...Donghyuck is forever.

\\\

Now, Mark makes sure to write always and everywhere, carries his notebook with himself and updates the notes on his phone. He writes before and instead of going to bed, at breakfast if he doesn't forget about it, and after brushing his teeth; writes, arguing with Renjun, talking to his mom on the phone, ignoring Dongyoung's messages about the necessary meet up next week. He writes at the grocery store. He writes at home. He writes in public transport. He writes in the park where he misses on everything and everyone in the world.

But Donghyuck - no, he doesn't go past him.

"What are you doing?" Donghyuck's insides explode like candy pop, cherry bomb, and burning mimosa buds when he sees Mark for the first time in a month. 

"It's a secret," Mark hides his phone, there's a whole poem about the god of sun (Donghyuck) and the mere mortal who's fallen for him (Mark). 

Donghyuck sits on the damp cold bench, hands, as usual, in his pockets of not a windcheater but some ludicrous sport jacket that somehow still looks awfully good on him. Donghyuck inhales through his nose and exhales through his mouth, making a thick steam cloud. Then, he suddenly turns to Mark and smiles, squinting, "You have a lot of them? Your secrets?" 

"Should start sewing up the pockets with them unless I want all of them to break free," Mark laughs. 

"No." 

Donghyuck doesn't look just offended, he looks aggrieved; furrows his brows and shakes his head.

"What?"

"Tell me better. Do you have a secret?" 

Their eyes meet like at that moment when they'd kissed for the first time, becoming one long from two short. But now Mark understands that Donghyuck asks pretty much seriously and he gets horrifyingly uncomfortable because of it; because Mark gets a feeling of someone creeping into his soul in the most arrogant way possible. A pathologist cutting like a knife. 

As if all the poems Mark's written within this month didn't kill him. Kills him - this very gaze. It rips him. It tears him out with his roots. 

"I do." 

Donghyuck continues to dig in, deeper and deeper; he looks and looks, more and more thoughtfully. Mark even catches himself thinking that it would be better if they were kissing to spite old people that walk past them. 

"And you?" 

"What?" Donghyuck breaks, looks away, eyes now moving to the asphalt and his sneakers, scared; his legs are for sure frozen in those sneakers, of course, anyone's would be if they spent a day jumping through these treacherous puddles. "I do," and he quickly returns to his normal self, playful, childlike innocent, sugar and life burning lover. "I bet ten hundred thousand won that your secret is nothing compared to mine. People die for such secrets as mine."

"Really?" Mark tries to look as cold as the muggy bench feels. "People usually live for such secrets as mine." 

"Tell me?" Donghyuck looks at him like children look at the cake that can't be eaten until the guests arrive. 

"Then how will I live? What for? I don't ask you to reveal your secret." 

Donghyuck looks somewhere away and sighs, tears off his lungs, it might be it; his sigh is very woeful. He turns to Mark, hits his shoulder and gets up, drags after himself and says along the way, "That's good! Or else I would have to die not for your secret...

They stop near Yoonoh's bookstore. 

...but for you." 

Mark would gladly live for Donghyuck. And, maybe, he'd gladly die for him, too. 

\\\

By mid-April, the notebook overflows with words and Mark postpones his date with Donghyuck for a whole hour so that he could show his work to Dongyoung. And find out when he can finally burn it! Because new words are already on their way, it's not that hard to say goodbye to the old ones. 

In the apartment above the bookstore, there's something rotten, it also smells like burnt sugar and acetone as if you're entering not the lair of writers but a shelter of some hatters. If there's anything they have in common, then it's madness - full, total, taking in bondage. You begin to breathe this madness, as well as a combination of (separated and jumbled) odd smells. The words here, oddly enough, you breathe too. 

The first thing Mark does is take off his shoes and open the window. 

Dongyoung flips through the little book that was handed to him right after with a critical squint and seems to get lost in space. But, when he looks up, returning to his kitchen, to his chair, Mark understands that he should feel some kind of triumph because Dongyoung, indomitable, cunning and absolutely obnoxious Dongyoung, is crying. Giving the notebook back to Mark, shaky fist wiping the tears off his face, he scoffs, "What kind of bullshit you made, Mark Lee." 

On the calendar, there is a beautiful even number of a beautiful even month and an ugly odd weekday of an odd year of life.

Dongyoung sits on a chair that he dragged from under the table and places his heavy head on his hand. Mark tries almost not to breathe so that he won't drive the poems' jingle out the open window, and that's when Taeyong comes in: without his usual makeup, without his beret or his scarf, in a worn crumpled shirt and simple sweatpants. His bangs are tied in a funny little ponytail, he looks very sleepy, lips blooming in satisfied cheshire smile. 

He gets himself a glass of water, tells Mark that it's a good idea to air out in here and compliments his new shirt, wondering where'd he get such. And then, Taeyong shuts up momentarily and silently (as if he's scared) crouches down in front of Dongyoung, trying to see past the fingers that cover his eyes. 

"What's wrong?" 

Dongyoung only keeps silent, throws his hands out to the side, gulps through the lump stuck in his throat. "Our boy grew up. Dammit, Yong, he's all grown up."

Now it's Taeyong flipping through Mark's work: time to time he hums, sighs, gives back with a stern look. He throws coldly, "he didn't grow up." 

Mark's heart sinks down with a loud thud. 

"He just remembered how it is to be a kid," Taeyong strokes his shoulders, warm. "Only more important than that is to never forget what it feels like being a child." 


	3. air

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> «..."hello" comes from Old English hál béo þu ("Hale be thou", or "whole be thou", meaning a wish for good health) (see also "goodbye" which is a contraction of "God be with you"...»
> 
> (Bill Bryson, "Mother Tongue")
> 
> doyoung — breathin' (ariana grande cover)

"Hello."

Mark takes his invisible hat off and only smiles with his eyes as he takes a seat on the wooden swing bench next to Donghyuck. The sun burns upon them, ants run under them, and between them the wind signing and the sky falling because of this song. 

"Are you greeting me? Or just ordering me to be healthy?" Donghyuck narrows his eyes, throwing a lollipop in his mouth. 

"What do you want more?"

"You."

"Well, it's obvious."

The lollipops in the plastic bag on Donghyuck's knees are light green, lemon yellow, neon pink; wrappers, wrappers, wrappers. Mark pulls one out on spec, his eyes closed, and he gets a cherry pop, bomb-bursting on the tongue - the boy laughs, the Poet in him cheers. 

"What?"

Mark shakes his head, clings closer to Donghyuck, and the other knocks their noses together.  
Breath on breath, cherry on orange, life on life.  
Lips on lips. 

"I have to tell you something important," Mark pulls away.

"What can be more important?" Donghyuck scoffs, albeit having his heart in his throat, he suddenly feels so scared, as scared as when his parents were breaking dishes behind the wall. And, panting, were angrily screaming at each other. 

"Didn't you want my secret?"

"And didn't you want to live?" There are tears in Donghyuck's eyes. 

"I can live for you." 

"Just don't be a coward," Donghyuck whispers.

"What do you mean?" Mark whispers back.

"I mean live, but don't die." 

Mark thinks that he already heard it somewhere, bad goosebumps cover him; he takes inhale after inhale, exhale after exhale while Donghyuck fidgets nervously and doesn't gather the courage to even hold his hand. "You love poetry, right?"

"What's the question?" He frowns. "I do love it."

"And me? Do you love me?"

"Mark!" Donghyuck ringingly swats his knee, "I love you."

"And what if," Mark bites his lip until he feels a metallic taste on his tongue, "I told you that these two loves kind of interweave?" 

"You want to give me another compilation?"

"Only if it isn't written by me," Mark shakes his head. "Orange Bible, for example, is written. By me."

"Prove it." Donghyuck moves away completely and looks at Mark with sly eyes, crossing his arms over his chest. Mark interrogatively raises his eyebrows, and aside from an extremely thoughtfully_ umm..._ nothing much comes out of his mouth. 

"Should I read an excerpt from a certain page or-" 

"-or buy me oranges on our next date," Donghyuck cuts him off. "I'm very much in love with poetry, you and oranges. The bible isn't necessary." However, he stops to think about something. "Unless it's written by you." 

\\\

Donghyuck's childhood, if we believe adults' words, was difficult; and he himself, as a child, was difficult. But that's the point. Donghyuck's never believed adults and thought to himself that that's why they're throwing this horrible word "difficulty" at him, sometimes changing it to an even sharper and nastier "problematic".

His parents had planned to divorce when he was nine, and he'd moved to his grandma and grandad's for the time of the trial, in the countryside. It was his first escape from the big and frighteningly real world; from the world of scream and endless arguing, where there's no time to simply _breathe._

On the other hand, it was really good there in grandma and grandad's house. And there was time for some air too. 

For breakfast: pancakes with cherry yogurt and green tea with milk, for lunch: nourishing soups, for dinner: noodles with seafood, in breaks: grandad's adventure stories - he's an old sailor, and grandma's fairytales about real love - she's an actress of provincial theatre. 

Besides, there always were neighbor's smoky gray kitten with blind blue eyes, creaking floorboards and a big window in the attic, where in the evenings Donghyuck would disappear with a flashlight and books in tow. The smell of fresh apples at any time of the year, loud melodic laughter, fields with sunflowers, their neighbor's flower garden (she's a young teacher in art school). Freedom, freedom, freedom; eternal wind. Eastern. Of changes. His wind, Donghyuck's wind. 

Wind as his only friend, his only satellite. The only one who had helped him run away from stuffy, cramped, plastic and phony box (mother's apartment) at age of sixteen; the only one who had helped not to be so sorrowful after simultaneous loss of his two closest people (grandma's and grandad's) at age of seventeen; the only one who had listened to his songs, exclamations and tears, when he was eighteen and scared that no one would accept him to the amateur theatre that he so soon had grown fond of with all his soul.

The life always had chosen Donghyuck on its own, and the Wind is the only thing that Donghyuck chose by himself.

The Wind. _ And Mark._

"You started to play badly," Taeil says when they're rehearsing the last show of the season. His look isn't dissatisfied, his voice is, however, utterly offended, Donghyuck can't blame the director for it. 

"Remember how it was in Portrait?" Jaemin cuts in as he stuffs a golden curtain in the locker behind the backstage. He squints because of spotlights and his big pretty eyes turn into a cunning fox-like squint of narrow eyes. "She played love until she learned it." 

Donghyuck sulks, looking like a balloon, his whole face turning a shade of crimson. "You're such a dumbass, Jaemin-ah." 

"At least I'm a dumbass who says the truth," he frowns and, walking past Donghyuck, ruffles his hair.

Donghyuck even winces from such a simple and not so long ago usual gesture. As for Donghyuck, now no one can do it to him except for Mark, it might be written across his face because Jaemin chuckles and looks so. So knowingly, it's like he's experiencing the same thing. 

"What a horrible feeling, this love and all," he says, standing in the door. "You never know what to expect from yourself and this machine," he hits his chest. "Who knows? Maybe, it will go haywire all at once?" 

Donghyuck shakes his head from side to side. "If you don't want it to go haywire, don't let it overheat. Don't forget to breathe or something." 

He doesn't believe his own words. His heart burns so much that no Wind, not even a northern one, could cool it down. 

\\\

Mark, by Taeyong's advice, stands on his chair, the papers of printed poems of, alas, not a new plot - about Sun's and Moon's love - tremble in shaking hands; from such a height, right under the lightbulb that's buzzing awkwardly into his ear, Mark feels some sweetness or maybe even some sourness burn in his eyes. It might be some salt after all. 

Breath in-breath out_-dive in._

The printed papers fly to the floor, his eyes get closed by his eyelids, the eyelids - by his hands, his hands - by invisible Poet's lips, who asks, asks and asks to read, read and read. 

With a heavy heart, every day Moon dreams of Death, looking for a room with all windows wide open, and Sun travels along the waves of Inspiration, looking for someone to love with its burning, flaming heart, ready to turn into a coal if no one loves it back. Suddenly, they bump into each other. Through the dream, life, and five thousand light-years. 

When Moon and Sun bump into each other, Death and Inspiration disappear, the whole world disappears right after. The Wind appears, bringing poems and music; the Wind appears, carrying sorrows away; the Wind appears, after which either Moon and Sun are ready to run, intertwined with fingers, souls and hearts. One of the hearts isn't pulled down by the weight of its existence anymore, the other one doesn't turn into coal.

They say their goodbyes and don't get to see each other for weeks, centuries, infinities. But their hearts don't break down - they're beating, beating and beating. 

Mark jumps off his chair and, keeping his eyes shut, starts walking in circles, reading his text that's stayed in not only his memory, clear and sharp. It's remained by the remnants of a blue rod on his skin, by empty cups of strong-strong coffee, by unfinished talks (because of him instantly falling asleep) with Donghyuck on the phone. It's remained like inhaling air, a gum taste on his tongue, a song that's playing through empty walls until three in the morning. It's here, here, here.

"I know, your ship," Mark stops and opens his eyes for the first time of his reading, "will travel around for a long time. My letters, my poems, as much as I want them to, won't make it to you; and may my letters not be in a hurry, and may wind and waves be around you, I beg, I kiss, I promise not to forget. And I ask you, write to me in response, write to me. I will sing to you, do you want it? I believe in you, I wait for you so much."

Mark looks at the ground, kicks one of the lying papers and the corner of his lips tips upward, he thinks about how good it is that he doesn't have to wait for a whole eternity and a half to see Donghyuck. 

Around him - his friends-writers crowding to congratulate about his new texts, interrupting each other, they kiss his forehead, his ears, and tired fingers, Seulgi ties some bracelet on his wrist, Kun advises not to doubt himself and turn the pieces into a poem, Sooyoung proclaims herself a proud mom and offers to design his next book in aquamarine and its name divide in gold and silver. Only Yoonoh, Dongyoung and Taeyong stand aside, they pet the cat with big blue eyes rubbing on their feet, and whisper. 

"I'm telling you, we should ask Renjun if he got a crush," Dongyoung frowns as if it's something bad and puffs his cigarette. 

"In the room," Yoonoh sighs, "it's not allowed." 

"Not allowed to fall in love?" Taeyong scratches his brow. 

"Listen here, you," Dongyoung pokes the cigarette in his friend's face, "If you finished your cigarettes, don't bother me finishing mine." 

"Maybe he's asking for one," Taeyong muses, fixing his scarf. 

"Anything else I'm supposed to do? Maybe dance danse macabre?"

"What's the use in the dance of death for you?" Yoonoh smiles. "You're just like the death yourself." 

"Death disappeared in Mark's story," Taeyong reminds. "But I don't want Dongyoung to disappear." 

"Of course you don't," Dongyoung nods. "I pay the bigger part of the rent." 

"No, you're the one who remembers to feed our cat," and Yoonoh takes cat's proposed paw. 

"You're such a bitch."

"Share your cigarette, huh?" 

"First I'm sharing my cigarettes, then my rent, what's next?"

"This whole world," Taeyong sing-songs, laughing hoarsely. 

\\\

"Boo!"

"AAHH," Renjun jumps and drops his sketches. 

"Just breathe!" Jaemin puts all the papers in the folder; gives it to its owner and throws his hands up; tries hard not to laugh when he sees Renjun's expression: poor boy got scared by an unexpected tickling from the back, after all. The artist tries to hit the actor's shoulder but the latter jumps away on time. 

And bursts out laughing anyway.

When Jaemin laughs, Renjun understands that he can't be angry at him for too long. He can only watch; admire how right that laughter sounds. How right it feels to be together in one cosmic space, on one planet, in one city, on one note.

"How'd the rehearsal go?"

"Taeil was scolding Donghyuck again," Jaemin shrugs. "There's something off about him these days. First, he suddenly became happy..." 

"Taeil?"

"No, Donghyuck!" 

"Ah. And what now?" While they go down the street, Renjun intertwines their fingers; as if on accident. 

"Well, now he's," Jaemin rolls his eyes, _"in love_ with someone." 

"Love isn't happiness, in your opinion?" Renjun finds it pretty fortunate that the lighting isn't working on this side of the street and his very rosy cheeks aren't seen. 

Jaemin keeps silent, he drops Renjun's hands and now walks backward, risking to knock off random passerby and himself as well - all this just so their eyes could be directed at each other only; his hands are in his jacket pockets, his thoughts somewhere in the clouds. 

Renjun is silent too, his hand gets cold pretty fast and itches to bring the other's hand back, and here it is: what is it? Here it is: how do you explain it?

"Love is you, in my opinion." 

Renjun clicks his tongue at that, rolls his eyes...  
...and gulps happy tears when Jaemin squeezes his hand even more tightly than before.

\\\

At home, Renjun knocks on Mark's door and finds him talking on the phone; like a mom who burst into her son's personal space he stands in the door until Mark doesn't get off the phone, mumbling into it, "I'll call you later".

"Mark Lee," to complete the picture there is only a wet dish towel left that Renjun could hit the wall with so impressively that there would be an-almost-ringing-like sound bouncing off the window, "Explain yourself." 

"Umm..." here we go again. 

Jaemin pops up out of nowhere behind Renjun, looking with interest into the room where the poems are written and the hearts get broken. Or, after all, burnt. 

"Who were you chatting with?" Jaemin smiles so sincerely and bright that Mark wants to turn off his table lamp. And ask to turn off the lampposts outside, too. 

And Renjun wants to get the moon from heavens, paint it with black marker and hang up back there; it doesn't matter will there be any sense in the moon after, there's not much in it right now, anyway.

"None of your business," Mark childishly pokes out his tongue.

"What's up with you?" Renjun laughs. "Fell in love?" 

"And you?" Mark bites back with the calmest expression ever.

"Might be so, what about it then?" Jaemin answers. "What about us?"

"Both of you are," Mark sighs, "just gross." 

"Call Dongyoung, he's right," Jaemin retreats to the kitchen. "Damn, I owe him three hundred won! That sly dog." 

"I hope," Renjun nods Mark goodbye, who's blinking sheepishly and comprehending the information he just got, and closes the door, "This three hundred won he's gonna spend on the best food for their cat." 

\\\

"What do you think," Mark threads his fingers through Donghyuck's hair, who's lying on his lap, "what does love taste like?" 

May reveals millions of possibilities around them, flower buds and a sheet of a clean kind sky, blinding with its simplicity. Mark thinks that beauty always hides in simplicity; in simple smiles and chuckles, in simple tubes of paint and white papers, in simple songs played by some stray in the crossing, in simple promises to return back before parting forever, in simple children's sandcastles, in simple drops of rain on the windshield, in simple oranges bought in four ounces at the price of two. 

"Like citrus fruits," Donghyuck laughs and winces right away, the orange peel's huddled under his nail and now it unbearably burns, burns, burns. "Fruits you didn't forget to bring," he jokingly scolds him, "but a knife you somehow forgot." 

Mark laughs too but repeats his question, adding in between his - for Donghyuck it's just overwhelmingly adorable - _"Be serious though!"._

And waits for Donghyuck's answer as if it's a death sentence. 

As if his whole life depends on this death sentence.

"Like berry candy. You know, pop candy. Berry flavored. Cherry pop, for example. But," Donghyuck gets up and pays no mind some peeled slices that fall on grass from their disposable plate, "but not all the love tastes like that. Sometimes it's like cough syrup. Used to drink such when you were a kid, right?" 

"Yes," Mark winces, "One kind of a disgusting thing. What's there about love?" 

"There is," Donghyuck pouts.

"Oh yeah, of course," Mark rolls his eyes. "I ask you _seriously_ and you say some bullshit." 

"That's not true!" Donghyuck hits his shoulder weakly but not playfully; _again_ "Just, at first, love can taste like cherry pops, everything's fine then. If it's as much sweet and happy, you must keep it with both hands," and he tightly squeezes Mark's hand, kisses his fingers, "but if suddenly. If suddenly love starts to be bitter and upsetting, its taste becomes a cough syrup, you must let it go," and Mark's hand limply hangs in the air, "and run. You must run away from it, wherever the Wind guides you to because love isn't supposed to heal." 

Mark looks into Donghyuck's eyes for a very long time, and the other only blushes red, squints and turns away. "I wanted to say that love doesn't have to heal your cough." 

"No," Mark kisses his shoulder. "You wanted to say that love has to give pleasure, even if it's unhealthy." 

"But isn't... isn't everything that gives pleasure unhealthy?" 

And for the first time after talking to Donghyuck, Mark wants to cry and doesn't want to write poems. 

And for the first time after talking to Donghyuck, Mark understands: love isn't only spring, infinite, young and fragrant; love is also taking someone's pain, cold, so cold (to aching bones) winter, and hot, so hot (leaving burns on smooth skin) summer, this is forgiveness and this is farewell.

And for the first time, Mark forgives but doesn't want to forget.

"That's because," Donghyuck whispers, "It's too early for goodbyes."

"Hopefully, this _early_ is forever," Mark replies. 

Donghyuck's heart is slowly, but surely burns, burns, burns and goes down in small black coal, with which Renjun will draw a sketch one day and sell it with an exorbitant price like the art of some Monet, Manet, and e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e. All of a sudden, the weather is horribly windy, and Donghyuck falls on Mark with a kiss, sticky hands brushing his tears.

He kisses, kisses, kisses, sobbing and hating himself. He can't understand how an orange can taste so bitter. 

"Slow down," Mark laughs, "we'll suffocate." 

Donghyuck decides that it's better for him to suffocate than getting burnt. 


	4. see you soon

Donghyuck wants to explode. He wants to burst into Mark's room like sun and sea's vortex, tear off all the papers, take his face in his warm dry hands, make him look into his amber eyes. And say... 

"...do you know me?" 

They're standing in the middle of a garden: sad adroop flowers, so white, so pink, and mercilessly scorching sun of the leaving spring with all its flamboyance, freshness and wonder. Mark looks away from the kids running around granite tracks and drops his gaze to Donghyuck's sneakers. There's a sound of the guitar bouncing around outside, a jingle of the flowing fountain nearby. For some reason, everything smells like needles and cotton candy, just like in an amusement park. There's smoke from someone's menthol cigarettes, too. 

"Of course. Of course, I know, what are you talking about?"

"And do you love me?" Donghyuck bites his lips and tries not to look at Mark. Mark, on the other hand, squints and sighs discontentedly, not quite catching what all this questioning is for. 

"Say it, don't be scared," Donghyuck finally looks into his eyes. Mark isn't scared but keeps silent all the same. He doesn't have anything to say, or what. Or he just doesn't have to? He remembers that Donghyuck has a secret, also remembers that before telling his secret he was asking the same questions. And now he's all - somewhere not here, somewhere far away, reflecting on what his secret could be. 

Donghyuck just watches him all this time; he watches hopelessly and understands that the words and the lines between them pull Mark away, a fiery picture of yellow, orange and red characters pull, pull and pull. He understands and feels so sorry that he's not like that picture, he's a human. Just a human. 

Full of skin, blood and silly thoughts. Of some ridiculous desires, which, according to his mother, won't do him any good (unless an early grave). Of loud, but sad laugh. Of regular human emotions tearing his soul apart every day and every night like hungry wolves. Of cheap dining hall pastry that he gets to taste on the breaks of rehearsals. Of argues with Taeil and the entire actor's troupe. Of infinite bitterness of loss. Of soft and gentle call of freedom, space and this thing called _Wind_. 

"You've never gone to my play, not even once," he whispers. "We have a show on Saturday. Leave your poems for at least a bit," and the last phrase sounds so sharp, Donghyuck himself winces at his words.

But Mark...  
Mark doesn't even notice it.  
He nods his head somehow distantly; he'll come.

\\\

"I don't need your act," Taeil yells, shaking a tight roll of paper that has to be, in fact, their script, "I need your life, get it?"

Director's eyes glow, Donghyuck had only one thing glowing like this before, his heart, but - what a pity - a little coal is all that's left from it, and from coal, there's a handful of ashes. He doesn't even know anymore whether he's getting it, whether he's living. Donghyuck walks away from the scene flabbily and reluctantly and pads to his spot; where the light of а lonely spotlight falls.

On this hot first summer day, he's suddenly cold in his woolen white sweater with blue paint. 

Donghyuck's glowing under spotlights; he _shines_. Brighter than the Sun.

Renjun sits only in back rows, as usual, asks Sicheng to sew a few buttons to a red velvet cloak and it seems to him like he's seen this image of either a person or the Sun somewhere. Or a god, in honor of whom there a bible exists. A cover of orange peel color and silver (like lace around your neck) gothic font. 

Sea, sea, waves, waves, someone's letters saturated with sadness and anticipation. Renjun _understands_ everything and puts it all together only now. And smiles sadly when Donghyuck transfigures on scene. 

He's both Donghyuck and his character, and there's so much of him, so rich that this whole empty hall and this whole empty world - they belong to him. Behind the scene, Jaemin is smiling, fixing his cardigan that rolled over once again; Taeil's smiling under the scene, beyond pleased that he finally could convey his idea. When Donghyuck's character finishes his monologue and turns his back to the audience, and the light above him fades away, Taeil sobs. 

"It was more than good."

Renjun notices that Donghyuck isn't happy about it at all.

He picks up his backpack on stairs and flies out the hall; everyone stares after him, someone even looks out the backstage. They start to whisper among themselves while somewhere there's a second lead actor rubbing his face in the bathroom, trying to wash the tears away and himself off the planet.

_Still_ hungry wolves _still_ tear his soul apart, a terrible buzzing in his ears, his head spins and spins, the whole planet spins like that, too. A planet, where there's no place for him anymore. Wind rushes in the window, it brings the smell of late spring flowers that bloom almost all year round and annoy him incredibly. 

So, so white, so, so pink.  
Adroop.  
Crystal.

_ She played love until she learned it. _

It's either a groan or a howl escaping Donghyuck's lips. He falls under the sink and has no idea that there are Jaemin and Renjun standing behind the door.

And _understanding _everything.

\\\

Mark comes June midnight when it's raining and a thunderstorm is knocking on the roof, and Donghyuck doesn't expect it at all but doesn't shudder when there's a knock on the door with number 17 hanging crookedly, he shudders - from the thought that he really and so suddenly doesn't expect Mark, especially like this: soaking wet, cold, hungry. 

He lights the kettle on, and gets cottage cheese rings covered with mint and strawberry icing on top out their small fridge; he takes out a guest towel from the bathroom (there are no guests except for Mark, and Mark hardly could be called a guest; it's nice to see guests - it's nice to breathe Mark) and accompanied by poet's protests, he dries his hair, the tip of his nose, his ears. Makes him change his clothes and get a blanket. 

And lectures him infinitely long.

"Idiot," Donghyuck mumbles, filling Mark's cup with tea. "You'll catch a cold. Get sick, then die, what am I gonna do?"

Mark finishes his cake and carefully watches as Donghyuck's fingers dance on a lace tablecloth bought at a vintage store on a fabulous discount day. Like someone's tears, large drops hit on the top of the roof. Mark thinks it's the moon crying. From happiness.

"Well, you can die not only because of a fever, can't you?" He says instead of his thoughts.

"You should've said that it's not necessary to die because of a fever," Donghyuck rolls his eyes and clicks his tongue. 

"Well, love is, too, kind of a fever," Mark tries to joke and gets his tongue burnt by his tea.

"Karma!" Donghyuck raises his brows. "I don't want to die," he adds, absolutely serious, propping his cheek in his right hand. Thinks to himself, does it mean that he also doesn't want to love.

To want doesn't mean to do, to do doesn't mean to want.

In the evening of the already happened day Donghyuck has his play, but Mark, it seems, doesn't even remember it. He comes to scream into (his only needed) cosmos about his finally finished poem, he's going to bring it to the printing shop in the morning, where Seulgi works now. Donghyuck nods diligently and joyfully, albeit he almost doesn't hear Mark's speeches, there's elevator music in his head, everything dances to the beat in front of his eyes, the real world is somewhere behind, and Mark's voice sends to the sweetest dream. 

Donghyuck drifts off right then - sitting in the kitchen, his hands under his chin; he drifts off, even though his heart pounds fast and loud, remembering it's supposed to function. 

Mark notices right away that Donghyuck's asleep and only smiles with the corner of his lips; kisses him on the top of his head. He moves him to his bed in the room; he moves him so easily and simply, as if Donghyuck weighs nothing, as if he's the wind, a light game, and very little of imagination. A dream. And if so, then...

"I don't want to wake up," Mark whispers to himself. And drifts off, too. Into darkness, into light; in a fairytale, in a nightmare; in the poetry, in the lack of words. 

Mark dreams of his finished story, Donghyuck dreams of nothing.  
Because he didn't finish anything.  
If we think about it, he didn't start.

\\\

On the bus stop, Mark bumps into Renjun and at first doesn't pay too much attention to it; they exchange some regular words between themselves about home stuff, and Mark is sure Renjun will now go to his studio to paint a picture of bare-chested Jaemin. But they sit on the same bus, and Mark can't hold in anymore, "Listen, where are you even going?"

"Well, same as you, to the play. Why?" 

For the first time, Mark puts two and two together, "Wait, Donghyuck and Jaemin played together in all the plays?"

"Yes," Renjun looks up from his phone. "What's bothering you?" 

Mark's worried by many facts at once: he and Donghyuck could've met earlier, and Donghyuck clearly didn't go to the first show of the spring play, and everything in this world is interconnected, and that he, Mark, could've come out of his creative stupor much earlier. If only he knew.

"If it didn't happen earlier," Renjun suddenly speaks up as if reading his mind. "Then it was meant to. And if it didn't happen later, it was necessary to be like that, too." 

They spend the rest of the drive in silence. They sit at the play in silence. Renjun notes, with some kind of holy pleasure, that Mark is crying over Donghyuck's last monologue. 

The prince kills himself out of fear that the king will find out about his love for the other kingdom's prince. Kill yourself because you're a coward and in love, how dramatic and predictably, Mark thinks. And cries very, very hard. 

Eventually, the entire hall applauds, jumping from their seats. Women's flax dresses and costumes crumple, men's necks get stiff, teenagers' reddened palms hurt from all the applauding. Renjun flees closer to the actors and throws a bouquet to Jaemin, his alive and happy prince, sends the purest smile, and the other just dances on his spot, with one gesture asking to wait for him by the emergency exit. Mark stands by the exit while the crowd wraps around him, and looks into Donghyuck's eyes who still has his hands in fake blood. 

"You just–" Donghyuck jumps down the scene and in two steps happens next to Mark, "–played amazing." 

"Thank you," Donghyuck kisses Mark's lips and flinches when he feels a short electric shock. And flavor.

Could an orange be so bitter?

Then, when they sit in Renjun's and Mark's kitchen, drinking champagne, quoting something incomprehensible, and kissing occasionally, Donghyuck feels like he's losing the ground under his feet. 

"Wanna try?" Mark asks as he nods at the citrus and takes a knife.

"No," Donghyuck shakes his head. "I think, one more bit, and I will become allergic to them, it's sickening now." 

Mark nervously jokes, "Hopefully, you aren't allergic to me?" 

"Mark!" Donghyuck harshly plants his hand on the table. "It's impossible not to be allergic to you, do you understand?" He laughs.

But Mark, for some reason, doesn't find it funny at all.  
He drops the knife, and it knocks on the floor unpleasantly, scaring Donghyuck.

\\\

Yoonoh decides to end the working day for himself earlier. 

He wants to come home, lay on the couch and lose himself in his laptop, rereading texts written over the night while none of the others are at home: in the morning, Taeyong went to Seulgi (she works in the printing shop and now helps her friends-writers to get their own - according to her words -_ deserved_ first print runs, for example, right now everyone is eager to see Mark's poem) regarding the publication questions; didn't it get to hit a lunchtime as Dongyoung, as usual, went somewhere, probably to bother some random acquaintances that walk by the route that's became tiresome after years.

He goes up creaking stairs and even his chest creaks. Yoonoh opens the door, slips out of his shabby converses and stops. "W-why are you at home?" 

Taeyong looks up. Papers are scattered around him and Dongyoung, clean and crumpled, full of words and even; they drown in them like in the Ocean, and then Yoonoh appears on the rescue ship out of nowhere. 

Will he decide to jump to them and drown?  
Or will he help them survive, move to the waterside?

"This guy," Taeyong nods in his friend's direction, "called me and–"

"–suggested on creating something together," Dongyoung announces proudly. "I just walked down the street, and an idea, you know, struck me. I wanna write a tale. And, well, I know only one specialist in it."

"A doubtful compliment," Yoonoh frowns but slides next to them... 

...and takes one of the papers that's lying idly. He grabs a pen then and starts correcting and crossing something out while murmuring. Dongyoung watches him with a sly look, grins when he notices that Taeyong's fully immersed in work too. The coming summer peeks with a smile in the open window and the smell of the story flitters in the air. 

This story isn't fairy, magic, miraculous; this story is simple, regular, casual. 

There's a lot of, how it often happens, plot holes, exaggerations, too many conflicts. A dark-gray cat weeds around in the exact same way and someone black-haired doesn't share his cigarette, and someone with freckles sells books, and someone screws up his favorite scarves. Somebody finds somebody in it but loses something while doing so, and somebody doesn't find anything because that something gets found on its own, like inspiration, love or perfect sized broad-brim.

"Everyone writes novels," Dongyoung says. "You try to write _a life._" 

"Sounds too pompous," Taeyong winces. "Aren't we sorta like a rock band, we just write something different from music." 

"I don't care, we do write." 

"Right now," Yoonoh gives the papers to Dongyoung, "you're the one not writing."

"So I will write," Dongyoung smiles. "I oh so will."

\\\

By July, the first print run of Mark's poem comes out, and Yoonoh says that it should be celebrated with no excuses, Dongyoung supports the idea and Taeyong has nothing left to do but agree. With huge bags, the three of them burst into the apartment hallway, where a sleepy Renjun stands under the dim lightbulb. 

"What? Are you gonna get drunk in the early morning?"

"This is," Dongyoung shrugs, "something like Christmas." 

"Just much more grandiose," Yoonoh cuts in, "don't be shy, we come in peace!"

Renjun lets them in, watches as writers meet Jaemin and ask him all about Mark's crush as if Jaemin's supposed to know every single thing in the world and especially every single gossip. They move to the kitchen, where they settle the bags and rattle with bottles, dishes, and even dare to break a cup. 

"One more, one less." 

"Do you say that," Renjun asks Dongyoung, "about your books as well?"

"Yes," Yoonoh and Taeyong answer in unison. 

The latter jumps when the door cracks open behind his back and a sleepy Mark steps in, "What the devil are you doing here?"

Donghyuck isn't sleeping too, he lays on his right side, looks out the window and tries to breathe evenly. He feels like he's sixteen, seventeen again. The wind screams into his ear, and for the first time, Donghyuck wants to resist that scream. 

But to want doesn't mean to do. To do doesn't mean to want. 

Breath in-breath out_-fly._

Here it is - Donghyuck's secret; he can't stand his ground at all and obeys his inner instinct, follows the gust, waits for big and scary Destiny's decision, and she's an imperious lady. And even more of a cunning bitch than Dongyoung. 

Eventually, Donghyuck comes to everyone when Renjun sets the table, he even smiles, kisses Mark although he feels bitter-bitter-bitter, but not like at someone's wedding. Drunk, loud and ardently.

He's bitter-bitter-bitter, as bitter as at someone's funeral. Just as drunk, loud but vapidly.

"My head hurts, I will go buy some pills and come back," and he frowns at that, and cracks his fingers, and keeps his eyes on the ground.

Mark smiles, lips touching Donghyuck's forehead, "See you soon."

Donghyuck smiles so wide, his laugh rings through sharp tears around the room, "See you soon," he nods despite knowing that everyone has their own definition of «soon». For Mark, it's a couple of hours, maximum a few days. For Donghyuck... 

...he doesn't know what «soon» is and how long it lasts. He knows only that there's cough syrup on his tongue instead of the sweetness of cherry pop; and even if the color is the same, something is different. When something changes and goes wrong you need to leave everything and run for the hills. Donghyuck closes his eyes but the run gets only faster.

"Donghyuck, buy some cake to eat with tea," Jaemin yells.

He freezes in the door, breaks his nail, holding on the door jamb, suddenly begins to breathe more evenly, and even his heart slows down for the first time in a month and a half. Donghyuck feels easy and happy, "Of course! Chocolate or the fruit one?" 

"Chocolate..." Mark replies immediately.

"...with cherry berries," Donghyuck smiles at him. 

And closes the door behind himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wish y'all to find a cherry-pop love and keep it with both hands <3
> 
> (don't forget to give your kudos to original work!)
> 
> [my twt](https://twitter.com/beargihugs)


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